Graham Rahal wants to carry good weekend into Indianapolis 500

The Associated PressIndyCar river Graham Rahal, right, gestures as he talks to a crew member before practice for the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg auto race, Saturday, March 26, 2011 in St. Petersburg, Fla.

By TALES AZZONI

Associated Press

SAO PAULO (AP) – Graham Rahal hopes his second-place finish at the rain-disrupted Sao Paulo 300 will help him turn around his IndyCar season just at the right time – heading into the Indy 500.

Rahal rebounded from disappointing finishes in the first three races of the year with a solid run on the streets of Sao Paulo on Monday, taking him from 21st to ninth in the drivers’ standings.

“At the end of the day we needed a good result for our team going into Indianapolis, which is coming up in only a couple of weeks,” Rahal said. “So it feels really good to be here right now.”

The race in Brazil was the last before the 100th running of the Indy 500 on May 29.

“When you go to Indianapolis the team has to have a lot of confidence,” he said. “(We will) go in there and feel really good about ourselves knowing that this entire weekend we were competitive. Of course Indy is completely different being an oval but there is no doubt that the Chip Ganassi Racing car will be extremely fast there.”

The second-place finish at the 2.5-mile, 11-turn Anhembi temporary street circuit in Sao Paulo came despite an early setback that nearly took Rahal out of contention.

“We had a spin early on in the race but we recovered from that very well,” he said.

The result marked the American driver’s best finish since a third place in Japan in 2009.

This season he hadn’t finished better then 13th two weeks ago on the streets of Long Beach. He was 17th in the opener in St. Petersburg, Florida, and only 18th in Alabama.

“We had a terrible start to our season and the first three races hadn’t gone our way,” the 22-year-old Rahal said. “We had some good runs going and everything got thrown out the window so (it’s good) to be here and just have a solid finish.”

BAD STREAK: Not even in his hometown can Helio Castroneves catch a break in this year’s IndyCar season.

The three-time Indy 500 winner added another disappointing result to his year by finishing 21st in the Sao Paulo 300 on Monday

Castroneves’ problems began on Sunday, however, when he was involved in a first-lap accident on the streets of Sao Paulo. It was his third crash in four races to start the year.
He had already crashed in St. Petersburg and in Long Beach, where he knocked teammate Will Power out of contention in the process.

It wasn’t his fault in Sao Paulo, though, as he was pinned into the wall at the first chicane and then was hit by Simona de Silvestro’s car. Danica Patrick and Tony Kanaan also were involved in the first-turn crash.

The Penske crew was able to fix Castroneves’ car after the race was red-flagged and he returned to racing on Monday, but he was already nine laps behind the leaders and couldn’t improve his position.

“It was really a shame because I had high expectations coming into this race,” Castroneves said. “I was trying to be very careful to make it through the first turn and score the most points possible. But it didn’t happen, unfortunately.”

He finished 20th in St. Petersburg, seventh in Alabama and 12th in Long Beach. He fell to 17th place in the standings, 100 points behind Power, and is virtually of contention for his first series’ title.

STRUGGLING PATRICK: Danica Patrick was nine laps back when the Sao Paulo 300 restarted on Monday and she didn’t have a lot to look forward to heading to the track on the streets of South America’s biggest city.

“It was a really long day,” Patrick said. “We started so far back and so many laps down and we knew we weren’t in contention. So our only job today was to kind of run our own race, get laps in, don’t crash, don’t spin. We did what we could and just tried to gain all the spots we could for points.”

Patrick’s hopes for a good result in Brazil ended early on Sunday when she was involved in a first-turn crash with Helio Castroneves, Simona de Silvestro and Tony Kanaan.

“The start was going to be chaos, I was sure of that,” she said after being taken out under treacherous conditions at the tight chicane following the start.

She also spun on Monday, but was able to return to the track and was the last car running when the race ended at the two-hour limit with 55 of the scheduled 75 laps completed.

Her 23rd-place finish was her worst this season, dropping her to 15th in the drivers’ standings, 99 points behind series leader Will Power.

Patrick continued to struggle in qualifying and was only 17th on the grid in Sao Paulo, her best starting position of the season.

FROM BACK TO FRONT: Venezuelan driver E.J. Viso had one of the best races of his career after starting last at the Sao Paulo 300 on Monday.

Viso ran second for several laps in the rain-disrupted race before a drive-thru penalty took him out of contention and led to a 13th-place finish.

Viso crashed in practice after a mechanical failure in his car on Saturday and the car was not fixed in time for qualifying, putting him last on the 26-car grid.

He made up 15 positions in the 14 laps completed on Sunday before the race was halted, then picked up nine more on Monday before dropping because of the penalty for blocking Marco Andretti while running second.

“I do not agree with the decision the series made to penalize me,” he said. “All I was doing was braking in the dry areas of the track. I never blocked, I was just doing what everyone else was doing. After that I started overtaking cars again, but at that point it was pretty late in the race.”

Still, the 13th-place finish is Viso’s best this season, putting him in 24th position in the drivers’ standings with 51 points. He hadn’t finished higher than 19th in the first three races.

RACING ON SATURDAY: Some drivers would like to see next year’s Sao Paulo 300 on a Saturday instead of Sunday to avoid the risk of having rain disrupt the event like it did this weekend and in the inaugural race a year ago.

“We can’t really control the weather in Sao Paulo,” said Tony Kanaan. “A solution is to keep Sunday free so the public can return to watch the race if anything happens.”

The stands were almost empty when the race restarted on Monday after being interrupted a day earlier because torrential rain made the track unsafe for racing.

Fans were able to see only 14 laps on Sunday before the race was postponed late in the day following two long red flags. Only three of those laps were under green flag.

The race on Saturday meant that practice and qualifying would have to be transferred to Friday, a day of usually heavy traffic in Sao Paulo.

“The biggest concern today was with traffic and it was possible to race, so that opens the way for possibly racing on Friday too,” three-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves said.